Site Mobile Navigation

Broader Rule Sought to Pick Gifted Pupils

Faced with a deluge of children vying for coveted slots in gifted and talented programs, and a dearth of top-scoring applicants, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced plans on Wednesday to broaden the city’s new policy for admitting children to the programs.

The change, which is expected to be approved at a meeting on Thursday by the Panel for Educational Policy, would guarantee students scoring in the top 10th percentile on admissions tests, as measured nationwide, a slot in kindergarten or first-grade gifted and talented programs. Under new rules announced last fall, only those scoring in the top 5th percentile would have been admitted.

The revision would nearly double the number of children guaranteed slots in kindergarten and first-grade gifted programs next year, to 2,999 citywide, from the number that would have been guaranteed seats under the 5th-percentile rule. If the 5th-percentile policy had been used, only 1,637 children would have been guaranteed slots in those grades, and in some districts there would not have been enough students for even one class.

In District 7 in the South Bronx, for example, only five students vying for first-grade and kindergarten slots scored in the top 5th percentile on the admissions tests, although 13 students met the top 10th-percentile threshold.

The overall number of children in gifted programs citywide may not change much, but some districts could lose gifted seats, while others could gain them. Citywide, there are currently 4,649 kindergartners and first graders enrolled in gifted programs.

Next year, there will be 4,916 students eligible for those classes. That number includes some students who will ultimately decline the offer, as well as kindergartners who are currently enrolled, even though they may not meet the new standards. Children currently enrolled in gifted and talented programs will not be affected by the new policy.

The new cutoff scores are the latest development in the chancellor’s effort to overhaul the city’s array of gifted and talented programs, which he has critiqued as a hodgepodge of offerings with varying, and often opaque, admissions criteria that tend to favor children with well-connected parents. The new cutoff still accomplishes the chancellor’s goal of establishing a uniform standard and process citywide.

But the change may not help some of the poor neighborhoods that are the intended beneficiaries of the policy. For example, in District 16, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, only five kindergartners will be eligible for gifted programs next year, even under the new, more generous standard; last fall, 34 kindergartners enrolled in gifted programs.

In a statement on Wednesday, the chancellor said that the 90th-percentile cutoff was still “rigorous,” and that he believed that students meeting the standard would “be able to thrive in a self-contained gifted class.” But he said officials would “closely monitor students’ progress” to determine whether to adjust the standard.

Officials said more than 50,000 students had applied for gifted slots, up from 13,000 last year, as a result of efforts to encourage applicants in districts that previously had few or no gifted programs.

When the standardized cutoff was announced last fall, it angered parents in some areas that have a wealth of gifted programs that could be shut down if enough students do not meet the new standards. In District 22, which includes Sheepshead Bay, Midwood and Mill Basin, Brooklyn, for example, 611 kindergartners enrolled in gifted programs last fall; next school year, only 185 will qualify. In District 3, on the Upper West Side, however, 192 students enrolled in gifted programs last fall, while 310 will be eligible next year.

Patrick J. Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy, applauded the revised standard, saying the more stringent cutoff would have shut too many students out. But he complained that parents would not know until June the specific programs to which their children had been assigned.

Last year, Mr. Klein required all applicants to take the same exam, called the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test, and to be evaluated by teachers on their classroom performance using the Gifted Rating Scales assessment.

The rating scales were replaced this year with a new test, the Bracken School Readiness Assessment, which officials said was more objective and easier to administer.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Broader Rule Sought to Pick Gifted Pupils. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe